Friday, February 26, 2021

Thai Red Curry

 Continuing the meal prep plus microwave trend...I prepped one of my go-to order at Thai restaurants. 

I grabbed a recipe from McCormicks website and used it as a guide.

Marinate the chicken in the red curry paste and brown sugar. 

In serving container, put in chicken, snap peas, red pepper strips, and bamboo shoots.

Blend up coconut milk and pour into each serving, add 1t soy sauce and a splash of fish sauce.

Top with rice and microwave for four min. Top with fresh cilantro.  Yum!



Saturday, February 20, 2021

Scallion Pancake for Chinese Lunar New Year

 Decided to try making some scallion pancakes after the kids raved about scallion pancakes that were delivered. Grabbed a recipe off the web, I feel like this is one of those dishes that is hard to mess up. That being said, I was a little lazy and I messed it up.

Letting the dough relax



Rolling out the dough



Fried and ready to eat. 



Saturday, February 13, 2021

Fish Stew

 I tried a fish stew recipe this week and made the stew in the instant pot and ladled it on top of portions of raw cod. 


I haven’t had Old Bay seasoning in sooooo long, that when I went to pull it out of the pantry, I found it had expired in 2015.  I still used it, but increased the dosage. The recipe called for diced tomatoes and I used a can of diced tomatoes.  When the stew was completed, it was very watery.  I ended up fishing (haha) out most of the potato chunks and using an immersion blender to purée the tomatoes and shallot bits. I ended up with a nice, thick stew to ladle over the cod.  Prior to consuming, I microwaved it for 3 min and let is sit to allow the heat to thorough cook the cod.  There were a couple times where I had to pop it back into the microwave for 30s.


This is the second recipe I’ve tried from the book “Dinner in a DASH” by Nancy Hughes.  Pretty good and worth making again!

Friday, February 05, 2021

Rice and peas

I love the concept of Jamaican jerk chicken, but often fear the intense heat that comes with the dish. Well, I found Busha Browne’s jerk seasoning at the local grocery and use it very sparingly to marinate chicken breast tenderloins along with an Island breeze seasoning from my local grocery.  

After referencing a couple Jamaican menus on the web, I noticed that jerk chicken is often served with coleslaw.  Makes sense, the coolness of the slaw would cut back on some of the heat. So, I texted friend for a recipe and I typically hate coleslaw, but this recipe is worth repeating!  I also made up some slaw with Tzaziki sauce because I had some left over.  Wasn’t too bad, makes me wonder if I can make a slaw dressing subbing yogurt for Mayo to create a lower calorie slaw.

 A long time ago, a co-worker introduced me to a dish called rice and peas. It is phenomenal for such a simple concept. I scoured the web and never found a recipe that inspired me to make the dish.  Flash forward a decade and the same friend that sent me the slaw recipe sent me a recipe for rice and peas.  I subbed the pigeon peas for black eyed peas and cooked it all together in the pressure cooker.  It was a little fail in that I burned the rice on the bottom and it didn’t cook.  But my oh my the flavors!!! Here’s a photo of flavor building in process: shallots, tomato paste and bacon.



So, in conclusion, here’s how the meal gets put together and cooked: 1. Cook the rice and peas using rice setting 2. Marinate chicken in zip lock. 3. Make coleslaw dressing 4. Portion rice into meal containers 5. Put chicken on top of rice right before cooking in microwave for 4 minutes. 6. Mix coleslaw salad blend with dressing 7. Top chicken and rice with coleslaw 

Delicious and worth repeating!